Test the Spirits

Today's Reading

Read 1 John 4:1-6: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."

Then read 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil." Notice that Paul gives both commands in one breath — do not quench, but test. He refuses to let us pick one.

Read Matthew 7:15-20, where Jesus says false prophets come "in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves," and gives us the test: "by their fruits you will recognize them."

And read Deuteronomy 13:1-5, where the Old Testament warns that even if a prophet's sign comes true, he is to be rejected if he leads the people away from the Lord. Sign-and-wonder is not, by itself, evidence of God's blessing.

Reflection

The opening line of 1 John 4 is one of the most important sentences in the New Testament for the modern church, and it cuts cleanly against two opposite mistakes Christians keep making.

The first mistake says: the Spirit speaks today, often, and visibly. If something feels powerful, if a leader has an anointing, if there is energy in the room, that is him. This is the assumption of much of charismatic and revivalist Christianity. It can be a beautiful posture. It can also be lethal. History is full of revivals that began genuinely and ended in damage — leaders who began preaching Christ and ended preaching themselves, communities that began praying and ended in mass delusion, individuals who had real encounters with God and parlayed them into platforms that destroyed everyone who got close.

The second mistake says: the Spirit speaks safely — through the preached Word, through Scripture, through the sacraments — and most other claims about him should be received with suspicion bordering on dismissal. This is the instinct of much of cessationist and confessional Christianity. It is a real wisdom. It is also, at its worst, a way of nominally believing in the Holy Spirit while functionally treating him as a doctrine. The same Bible that warns us about false prophets warns us, just as sharply, against quenching the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19) and against forbidding what God has chosen to do.

John writes 1 John 4 to a church somewhere on this spectrum, and he refuses to let them pick. Do not believe every spirit — but do test the spirits — and the test is not "does this experience feel intense?" The test is doctrinal and Christological: does this spirit confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Does it lead people toward the actual Jesus of the Gospels — the incarnate, crucified, risen Lord — or toward some other figure that uses his name?

Jonathan Edwards built a generation of pastoral wisdom on this verse. In 1741, with the First Great Awakening dividing American churches, he sat down and wrote The Distinguishing Marks. He was determined to do what most of us refuse to do — distinguish, with care, between what looked impressive and what was actually of God. He gave the church five negative tests (things that, by themselves, prove nothing — strong emotion, dramatic effects, Scripture quoted, conviction of sin, even visions and impressions) and five positive tests (a deepened esteem for Jesus, opposition to Satan's interests, a higher view of Scripture, conformity to truth, love for God and neighbor). His point was not that emotion was bad or that signs were forbidden. His point was that none of those things, on their own, was the proof. The proof was the fruit, the doctrine, and the trajectory.

Five years later he expanded the argument into Religious Affections — perhaps the most important book ever written on this subject in English. His thesis: "True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." He refused both the rationalist who treats Christianity as a set of cold doctrines and the enthusiast who treats it as a set of emotional surges. The Holy Spirit, Edwards argued, produces affections — deep, durable, Christ-centered loves that reshape a life. He does that both through ordinary means of grace (Scripture, preaching, sacrament, prayer) and, sometimes, through dramatic interventions. But the test is what the affections produce, not how loud they were.

J.I. Packer made the same point three centuries later in Keep In Step With the Spirit: "Are we coming to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit?" That is the question every claimed work of the Spirit must answer. Trinitarian. Christ-centered. Through the Son to the Father. Anything spiritual that bypasses Jesus, demotes Jesus, replaces Jesus, or makes the experience itself the point — whatever else it may be — is not the Holy Spirit.

This is liberating. It means Christians do not have to choose between credulity and cynicism. We are commanded to expect the Holy Spirit's real work — do not quench the Spirit — and we are equipped to test what claims to be him — test everything; hold fast what is good. Both commands are the apostle's; both are for us.

Over the next nine days we are going to use the criteria Scripture itself gives us — Christological, doctrinal, ethical, fruit-based — to walk through the kinds of spiritual experiences modern Christians actually encounter: prophetic words, healing claims, charismatic worship, mystical experience, deconstruction stories, "spiritual but not religious" claims that surface in the Christian world. The test is always the same: by his fruits, by his doctrine, by his Christ. Today, simply, the assignment is to decide that we will run those tests at all.

Going Deeper

Bring to mind a spiritual experience — yours, or someone else's — that you have not been sure how to evaluate. A conference moment, a worship night, a prophetic word, a sense of God's voice, a leader's testimony. Now ask the four New Testament tests you have just read: Did it confess the actual Jesus? What were the lasting fruits? Did it produce humility and love, or self-importance and division? Did it deepen attachment to Scripture, or replace it? You may not get a verdict today. You will at least have asked the questions Scripture asks.